Since 1916, thousands of Girl Scouts across the country have earned Girl Scouts’ highest honor — now called the Girl Scout Gold Award — for demonstrating extraordinary leadership and making change in their communities. On Saturday, June 3 in Pasadena, 256 Girl Scouts in Greater Los Angeles — the largest Gold Award class in the nation — will be honored by the regional Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles (GSGLA) council.

Nationally, only six percent of all eligible Girl Scouts achieve the Gold Award. Girls who earn the Gold Award automatically enter the military one rank higher, and qualify for college scholarships, additional national service awards, and more.

Earning the Gold Award requires the planning and implementation of a challenging, large-scale project that is innovative, engages others, and has a lasting impact on its targeted community. In Greater LA today, Gold Award projects tackled issues such as illiteracy, homelessness, sexual assault, discrimination, pollution, and more.

This year, one girl spearheaded a successful initiative to get hand sanitizer in China’s community hospitals; another taught children how to build computers to donate to low-income schools; and another led a distracted driving awareness campaign after her best friend was struck and killed by a car, for example.

“Girl Scout Gold Awardees show grit like go-getters, problem-solve like innovators, embrace new challenges like risk-takers, and display empathy and integrity as leaders,” said Lise L. Luttgens, GSGLA CEO. “Their projects have left a permanent effect on their communities, and the process has made an impression on each of them.”